With high-speed wireless services increasingly in demand, there is a need for more throughput per bandwidth to accommodate more subscribers with higher data rates while retaining a guaranteed quality of service (QoS), all over a packet network. While the definition for “wireless broadband” may vary, it is commonly accepted that the next-generation wireless broadband networks must be able to provide a wide variety of services, from high-quality voice to high-definition videos, through IP-centric, high-speed (>10 Mbps downlink and >512 Kbps uplink) wireless channels. See Shingo Ohmori, et. al, “The Future Generations of Mobile Communications Based on Broadband Access Technologies,” IEEE Communication Magazine, December 2000.
Due to the asymmetric nature of packet traffic, the requirements for wireless uplink (from subscribers to base-stations or access points) and downlink (from base-stations or access points to subscribers) are quite different. High throughput/spectral efficiency is of paramount importance in the traffic-heavy downlink, even if it means more involved hardware and higher cost power amplifiers at the base-station. On the other hand, amplifier efficient modulation schemes are critical to the subscriber terminal, in order to reduce cost and improve power efficiency. Clearly, separate design optimization approaches must be adopted for the design of uplink and downlink modems. However almost all current systems, e.g., the popular GSM and IS-95 networks, utilize a uniform modem and multiple-access structure for both uplink and downlink. As a result, the efficiency of the overall system is compromised.
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) are two modulation techniques frequently used for wireless communications. In OFDM, as illustrated in FIG. 1, a wide bandwidth is divided into multiple narrow-band subcarriers, which are arranged to be orthogonal with each other. The signals modulated on the subcarriers are transmitted in parallel. In DSSS, a modulation symbol is first spread across the available bandwidth by a spreading sequence and then transmitted. In code-division multiple access (CDMA), multiple subscriber stations communicate with a base stations using DSSS signaling with different spreading sequences.
OFDM is an efficient technique for multipath fading channels. In a well-designed system, the frequency response of each subcarrier can be made flat or near flat. Therefore, only very simple or even no channel equalization is required. Another significant advantage of OFDM is that it allows an optimal power and rate allocation to maximize the channel capacity. This inherent advantage is even more significant in a cellular system with multiple subscribers where the channel response of each subscriber is different. In this case, it is possible to maximize the entire system capacity throughput by judicious allocations of subscarriers to multiple subscribers.
On the other hand, OFDM also possesses some disadvantages. One of the disadvantages is the large peak-to-average power (PAP) ratio of the OFDM signals. This is a significant hurdle for implementing OFDM-based systems. A large PAP ratio means more stringent linearity requirements on the power amplifier or large back off, leading to higher cost or lower transmission power. This is especially undesirable for the implementation of subscriber terminals, which dominates the system cost due to their large quantity. In addition, to achieve the maximum capacity of OFDM with adaptive subcarrier allocation, it is often required to feedback the channel measurement at the subscribers to the basestation. This can also add overhead and complicate the system control.
DSSS often deals with the multipath channel through the use of so-called Rake receiver, which coherently adds together the signals received from multiple delay paths. However, when the data rate is high and the spreading factor is low, the performance of the Rake receiver degrades. Furthermore, a DSSS signal equally utilizes the entire spectrum, including both high-gain frequencies and low-gain frequencies. Therefore, the potential capacity of DSSS is less than that achieved by OFDM with adaptive subcarrier allocation. On the other hand, a DSSS signal typically has lower PAP than an OFDM signal. In addition, the use of DSSS enables code-division multiple-access that provides great multiple-access flexibility among many multiple-access schemes. Therefore, DSSS is still a very attractive technique especially for subscriber terminal transmission.
OFDM and DSSS both are widely used in wireless communications, but in most systems, a single technology is used for both downlink and uplink. For example, in the UMTS W-CDMA system, DSSS is used for both downlink and uplink, while in IEEE 802.11a, OFDM is used for both downlink and uplink. This means the advantages and disadvantages are both present in the system. For more information on W-CDMA, see H. Holma and A. Toskala, “WCDMA for UMTS,” John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2000. For more information on OFDM, see R. van Nee and R. Prasad, “OFDM for Wireless Multimedia Communications,” Artech House Publishers, 2000.